Geof Wheelwright renews his acquaintance with the current top-range Atari

The Atari 800XL is an old friend dressed up in some spanking new clothes.

It has lost some weight and added some style, but inside the 800XL lurks, more or les, an old Atari 800. Like a childhood friend that has gone to college, the 800XL now has a better memory (64K instead of 48K) and has shed the old dual-board design for a slim, new single-board look which is a good deal more attractive.

There is a good deal about Atari's newest machine that isn't so very new - but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It uses the same old Atari Basic, takes the same old Atari cartridges, uses the same old Atari peripherals ports and the now-standard Atari joysticks.

This means that the huge base of disk, cassette and (mainly) cartridge software can be used on the machine with no problems, and that the Atari base of peripherals, including their printers, game devices and storage devices, will plug in easily.

The 800XL, with its larger memory and smaller price (£259), should be competitive with other machines, such as the Commodore 64, at about the same price.

The 800XL keyboard's new high-technology design means the old orange special purpose keys have been turned into flat silver buttons on the machine's right-hand side and a "Help" key has been added.

Though the keyboard layout is much the same, the cartridge slots have been reduced to the singular. This is no great loss as you really only needed the second cartridge slot on the old machine to plug in Basic, which is now included in the price of the machine.

However, the cartridges are no longer 'goof-proof' - you can take them in and out of the machine while it's still on. On the 800, the machine switched off whenever you opened the cartridge cubbyhole - there's no cubbyhole on this machine and no such protection.

But the real difference between this Atari and its predecessor is an expansion bus. This is where the serious implications of the XL can come into their own with plans afoot for a CP/M module, 80 column card and modem.

The XL also has a better class of peripheral to plug in, with an extensive range of new add-ons including a letter-quality printer, touch-tablet and disk drive - all of which perform a good deal better than the last batch of Atari plug-in peripheral units.

The self-text routine that was so popular on the 600XL also makes an appearance on the 800XL. It tests the memory, the graphics and the sound with programs in ROM, so even if you can't afford any software for your new machine you can still make it *do* something.

The sound and graphics capability of the machine is still superb - even by today's ever-higher standards - and, as always, relies on Atari's custom chips: the GTIA, POKEY and ANTIC. And the traditional screen resolution and colour modes are preserved: 16 colours at 16 brightness levels through either a composite video monitor or ordinary TV.

Although the lack of an 80-column text mode may seem difficult for serious applications, the capabilities of programs like Atari's Atariwriter word processor and the promises of 80 column cards and CP/M should relieve that difficulty.

Another firm step on the Atari upgrade path, the Atari 800XL is a well-built and workmanlike machine that takes advantage of the vast existing Atari software and hardware (peripheral) base while adding enough extras (the smaller size, extra memory and the presence of an expansion bus) to keep essnetially old technology alive in a quickly changing market.

This is a machine you don't have to take any chances on; it's an Atari and will do everything you've come to expect of the Atari machines.